What happened to the Japanese PC platforms?
The other day a friend asked me a pretty interesting question: what happened to all those companies who made those Japanese computer platforms that were never released outside Japan? I thought it’d be worth expanding that answer into a full-size post. ↫ Misty De Meo Japan had a number of computer makers that sold platforms that looked and felt like western PCs, but were actually quite different hardware-wise, and incompatible with the IBM PC. None of these exist anymore today, and the reason is simple: Windows 95. The Japanese platforms compatible enough with the IBM PC that they could get a Windows 95 port turned into a commodity with little to distinguish them from regular IBM PCs, and the odd platform that didn’t use an x86 chip at all – like the X68000 – didn’t get a Windows port and thus just died off. The one platform mentioned in this article that I had never heard of was FM Towns, made by Fujitsu, which had its own graphical operating system called Towns OS. The FM Towns machines and the Towns OS were notable and unique at the time in that it was the first operating system to boot from CD-ROM, and it just so happens that Joe Groff published an article earlier this year detailing this boot process, including a custom bootable image he made. Here in the west we mostly tend to remember the PC-98 and X86000 platforms for their gaming catalogs and stunning designs, but that’s like only remembering the IBM PC for its own gaming catalog. These machines weren’t just glorified game consoles – they were full-fledged desktop computers used for the same boring work stuff we used the IBM PC for, and it truly makes me sad I don’t speak a single character of Japanese, so a unique operating system like Towns OS will always remain a curiosity for me.
